Words of the Wise by Louis Jacobs Maggidim & Hasidim: Their Wisdom. By Louis I. Newman. New York: Bloch Publishing Company. $5.50. Louis Newman’s “Hasidic Anthology” is justly famed as a good popular insight into the ideas of Hasidism, a delightful collection of anecdotes, and a rich mine of useful illustrations for preacher and public…...
Student dissertation – ‘The Theology of Rabbi Louis Jacobs: a Controversy in British Judaism in the 1960s’
Undergraduate dissertation, presented by the author to the Department of Theology of the University of Britsol in 1987. The Theology of Rabbi. Louis Jacobs: a Controversy in British Judaism in the 1960s A Dissertation presented to the Department of Theology at the University of Bristol Biography Louis Jacobs was born in 1920 in Manchester, from… Continue Reading ➨
Points from Sermons (Part 2)
Originally published in Venture 2.1 (June 1957), pp. 17-18. Searching for the Torah The Rabbis noted that the two middle words of the Torah are larosh darash, meaning ‘he diligently inquired.’ It is a mistake to think of Judaism as a static faith in which everything is given, as it were. There is room in Judaism…...
The Third Annual Louis Jacobs Memorial Lecture by Michael Melchior
Israel’s Future By Michael Melchior, Member of Knesset 28 June 2009 Rabbi Jeremy Gordon: I want to welcome Rabbi Melchior to New London Synagogue. Rabbi Melchior is the seventh generation to serve as Chief Rabbi in Scandinavia in his family. He received rabbinic ordination in 1980 at Yeshivat Hakotel and went back to Norway at…...
The Second Annual Louis Jacobs Memorial Lecture by Arnold Eisen
Taking Hold of Torah By Arnold Eisen, Chancellor, JTS, New York 6 July 2008 It is certainly a great privilege for me to be here. It would be so in any case but certainly to represent JTS at this synagogue on this evening in memory of Louis Jacobs. From what you just heard, if you read…...
The First Annual Louis Jacobs Memorial Lecture by Marc Saperstein
Jewish Preaching on Social Justice By Marc Saperstein, Principal, Leo Baeck College 20 June 2007 I am deeply honoured to have been asked to be giving this lecture at the first Yahrzeit of Morenu ve-Rabbenu. Our association goes back more than 25 years, when I discovered to my delight that he had written a very…...
Byron L. Sherwin, ‘Man of Controversy, Scholar of Distinction’
Published in Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, Vol. 28 No. 1 Winter Issue 1979. BYRON L. SHERWIN is associate professor of Jewish religious thought at Spertus College of Judaica, Chicago, Illinois. A solidly built man with penetrating eyes, an endearing charm and an entertaining wit, Louis Jacobs has made a major contribution… Continue Reading ➨
The Jewish Tradition
Originally published in Frank Whaling (ed.), The World’s Religious Traditions: Essays in Honour of Wilfred Cantwell Smith (T. & T. Clark, 1984), pp. 72-91. An inquiry into the relationship between faith and tradition in Judaism must begin with the linguistic problem. The classical sources—the Bible and the Talmudic literature—know neither the Greek-inspired term ‘Judaism’ nor the…...
Liberal Supernaturalism
Originally published in Ira Eisenstein (ed.), Varieties of Jewish Belief (1966), pp. 111-122. There are three different philosophies of Judaism among Jews today. These can be described as: 1. fundamentalistic supernaturalism; 2. liberal naturalism; 3. liberal supernaturalism. It seems to me that only the third does justice to both Jewish faith and modern knowledge. The purpose of…...
The Study of Jewish Spirituality
Originally published in Cheslyn Jones, Geoffrey Wainwright & S.J. Edward Yarnold (eds.), The Study of Spirituality, pp. 491-497. OTHER RELIGIONS Judaism LOUIS JACOBS Classical works in Hebrew Alexander Süsskind of Grondo, Yesod ve-Shoresh ha-Avodah. Jerusalem,1965. Bahya Ibn Pakudah, Hovot ha-Levavot; (ET) Moses Hyamson, Duties of the Heart. New York and Jerusalem, Feldheim, 1970. Cordovero, Moses, Tomer…...
Lee I. Levine (ed.), ‘Ancient Synagogues Revealed’
Originally published in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 115:2 (1983). ANCIENT SYNAGOGUES REVEALED. Edited by LEE I. LEVINE. pp. [villi], 199, 4 pl. [Jerusalem], Israel Exploration Society, 1981. Over 100 synagogal remains have been recorded in Israel alone and even more in the Diaspora, throwing light not only on this…...
Leon Schwartz, ‘Diderot and the Jews’
Originally published in French Studies 37:4 (1983). Diderot and the Jews. By Leon Schwartz. (Sara F. Yoseloff Memorial Publications). London and Toronto: Associated University Presses. 1981. 206 pp. 7 ill. In some of his writings Diderot vehemently denigrates Jews and Judaism as crude, primitive, obscurantist and unethical. Yet, often, his disparagement can be seen as an…...
Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer, ‘Hasidism as Mysticism: Quieitstic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought’
Originally published in Antony Polonsky, Israel Bartal, Gershon Hundert, Magdalena Opalski, Jerzy Tomaszewski (eds.), Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 9. RIVKA SCHATZ-UFFENHEIMER, Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought, translated from the Hebrew by Jonathan Chipman. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press and Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993); pp. 398 This English edition of…...
Gilbert S. Rosenthal, ‘Contemporary Judaism: Patterns of Survival’
Originally published in New York Board of Rabbis Bulletin 43 (1986). CONTEMPORARY JUDAISM: PATTERNS OF SURVIVAL, Second Edition by Gilbert S. Rosenthal. New York, 1986: Human Sciences Press. 401 pp. $34.95 Hard Cover, $16.95 Paperback. This is an updated edition of Rabbi Rosenthal’s Four Paths to One God (published in 1973); the four paths being those…...
Preface to ‘Safed Spirituality: Rules of Mystical Piety, The Beginning of Wisdom’
Preface by Louis Jacobs to Lawrence Fine, Safed Spirituality: Rules of Mystical Piety, The Beginning of Wisdom (Paulist Press, 1984). “Religion is a way of walking, not a way of talking.” This saying, attributed to Dean Inge, a pioneer in the study of mysticism for its relevance to the world of the twentieth century, provides an adequate…...
Ronald S. Aigen & Gershon D. Hundert (eds.), ‘Community and the Individual Jew: Essays in Honor of Lavy M. Becker’
Originally published in Journal of Jewish Sociology 29:1 (June 1987). Ronald S. Aigen and Gershon D. Hundert, eds, Community and the Individual Jew: Essays in Honor of Lavy M. Becker, viii+195 pp., Reconstructionist Rabbinical College Press, Philadelphia, 1986, $20.00 (paperback, $12.00). Part 1 of this Festschrift to a prominent Canadian rabbi and communal leader on his…...
Solomon Goldman, ‘The Ten Commandments’
The Ten Commandments, by Solomon Goldman, edited by Maurice Samuel, The University of Chicago Press, 1956. $3.75. Most readers of this journal will be familiar with the late Dr. Goldman’s The Book of Books and In the Beginning, the first two volumes in the contemplated series—now alas suspended owing to his death—on the whole of…...
Two Hasidic Masters and the Problem of Discipleship
Originally published in The Melton Journal 15 (1983). The relationship between teacher and disciple in Hasidism still awaits full investigation by students of the movement. The results of such an inquiry will no doubt be of interest and, possibly, assistance to non-Hasidic forms of Jewish leadership, say, of rabbi to congregation and teacher to pupils. In this…...
Jewish Perspectives (Current Theological Literature)
Originally published in Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, Winter 1969. It is the unhappy experience of the writer of a column such as this to suffer the embarrassment of a lack of riches, so few are the books devoted to Jewish theology in the Jewish world today. In a number of recent collections…...
Allan Nadler, ‘The Faith of the Mithnagdim – Rabbinic Responses to Hasidic Rupture’
Originally published in Judaism Today, Autumn 1998. Allan Nadler, The Faith of the Mithnagdim – Rabbinic Responses to Hasidic Rupture. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1997. pp. 254, £29.00. Numerous studies have been made of the conflict, which began in the second half of the 18th century—and is not without reverberations to this very day—between…...